[Aptitude-devel] Bug#411338: Bug#411338: marked as done (segfault in aptitude in pkgCacheGenerator::ListParser::NewDepends)

[Daniel Hartwig]

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: LimCore DebianBug <debianbug at limcore.pl>
> To: submit at bugs.debian.org

> aptitude crashes when doing anything (like install foo) while parsing data.
>

>
> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> [Switching to Thread -1212254528 (LWP 21019)]
> 0xb7efc066 in pkgCacheGenerator::ListParser::NewDepends ()
>   from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6.so.3.11
> (gdb) bt
> #0  0xb7efc066 in pkgCacheGenerator::ListParser::NewDepends ()
>   from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6.so.3.11
> #1  0xb7f25d5a in debListParser::ParseDepends ()
>   from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6.so.3.11

>
> so the file
> /var/lib/apt/lists/192.168.44.20:9999_debian_dists_stable_main_binary-i386_Packages
> is perhaps corrupted
>

>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>
> To: 411338-done at bugs.debian.org

> This bug report provides very detailed information but unfortunately
> was never handled.  It's a report from 5 years ago but obviously its
> effects are not present today ("aptitude crashes when doing anything
> (like install foo) while parsing data").
>

Hi Manual

This bug has been on my list to investigate when I have a large enough
block of time, so the results of your investigation are of interest to
me :-)

The original report concludes that this is due to a corrupted list
file, that 'apt-get update' will clear the problem, but aptitude
commands fail.

When determining that the effects are "obviously" not present today,
did you check this after updating using a list file corrupted in a
similar way?

It is difficult to determine precisely the corruption present,
however, the user has provided the final chunk read from the file
which may provide a clue.


There is enough information in this report to identify a small area of
the code (either in aptitude or apt) that can be examined to determine
the problem which appears to be in one of the list or dependency
parsers.

When presented with corrupt data the software needs to be robust
enough to handle the situation sanely, especially as a segfault like
this can lead to further corruption/loss of data.


Regards